Plastic bottles and cancer: Deciding if plastic water bottles are safe

Sister bought me an aluminum water bottle to use this summer and made me promise to never buy water in plastic bottles. Her concern was over the press about the estrogen and carcinogens people were exposed to from the plastic in the bottles leaching into the water. We use a pitcher with a filter for tap water at home. I found it all very confusing and stopped buying bottled water, (except for my son’s energy water) to appease sister but mostly because I believe we should be somewhat sensitive to the environment. Those ads about water bottles piling up at the dump got to me. I make the Big Guy take his energy water bottles to the recycling center and was relieved to find that the plastic PepsiCo uses is safe.

Lately there has been some real clear-headed info about which bottles are safe and which are not. I know 3, 6 and 7 indicates plastic that is not safe. The numbers 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 inside the triangle imprinted on the bottle means that plastic is okay. Well, actually those numbers don’t indicate safety levels they identify chemicals used to make the plastic, but for our purposes this is how the “safe for use” can be identified.

I have given up on trying to avoid the carcinogens in my makeup, food, air, earth, home-goods and in the world in general. I couldn’t keep track. I like this numbering system even if the plastics industry didn’t intend me to use the numbers to identify safety factor. I think the world would be a happier, safer place if we could just put a number on every item (including teenage sons) that cause us stress or could cause cancer. Now that would make life very easy indeed!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathy-Ellen Kups, RN

Kathy-Ellen is a Registered Nurse living in Michigan. In 2003, Kathy-Ellen was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. She was cancer-free from April 2004 until December of 2013 when it was discovered that...read more